Photograph processing apparatuses which can automatically carry out processes such as exposing, developing, bleach fixing and stabilizing process on a photosensitive material such as photographic paper have been known in the art. Upon exposing a photosensitive material in such a photograph processing apparatus, a direct (analog) exposing process, which exposes the photosensitive material by light transmitted through a photograph film, has been widely used. In recent years, on the contrary, a so-called digital exposing process has been put into practical use, in which the photosensitive material is exposed by using light that is controlled based upon digital image signals obtained by picking up an image of a film using a film scanner provided with image-pickup elements such as CCDs. The application of the digital exposing system makes it possible to perform various image processing operations, such as color correction, density correction and sharpness treatments, with a high degree of freedom, as well as to readily carry out a extra-copying process, and thus it enables to provide good prints with high quality that are superior in the reproducibility in colors and density as well as in the resolution.
At the same time, as personal computers have come to be widely used in homes and offices, such business service has been started, in which digital image data obtained by picking up images from developed films is recorded in a removable recording medium such as an FD (floppy disk), a CD (compact disk) and the like and at the time of returning the films, this is given to a customer together with sheets of photographic paper that have been printed. With this service, customers are allowed to edit the image data using personal computers at home or in the office, as well as to readily obtain copies of the prints that have same image quality as the initial prints by taking the recording medium to a photo-print shop upon ordering more copies of the prints.
Furthermore, still another business service has been prospected of practical application in which index prints are placed on the surface of the recording medium storing the digital image data so that the contents of the image data stored in the recording medium can be confirmed at a glance. For example, in order to print such index prints and the like, on the surface of, for example, a CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable: a write once, read many type recordable CD which can be written only once) medium, an ink-jet printing device is used in some cases. As illustrated in FIG. 7, in such an ink-jet printing device, normally, a CD-R medium 101 is fixed onto a predetermined position, and as a printing head 102 is shifted on the entire surface thereof laterally and longitudinally, the corresponding prints are formed on the CD-R medium 101.
However, in the generally-used ink-jet printing device as shown in FIG. 7, it is necessary to maintain a shifting region of the printing head 102 that occupies the entire area on the surface of the CD-R medium as an operation space, and it is not possible to place any members on this region, resulting in causing a problem of difficulty in miniaturizing the device. Moreover, another problem is that, in the case that the printing head 102 is smaller when compared to the CD-R medium 101, the printing head 102 needs to be frequently altered in its shifting directions on the CD-R medium 101, resulting in causing a problem of taking relatively long time in its printing operation.
Moreover, in the case of the generally-used ink-jet printing device as shown in FIG. 7, since this is placed as a device separated from the CD-R drive for recording digital image data in the CD-R medium, there is a problem that another installation space is required in addition to the photograph-processing apparatus. In particular, since, the photograph-processing apparatus is installed in a relatively narrow space in many cases, it is often difficult to provide an installation space for the printing device, and this results in a major obstacle upon carrying out the index printing service.
Therefore, the main object of the present invention is to provide a relatively small-sized printing device which can carry out a printing operation on a disk such as a CD-R medium in a short time.
Moreover, another object of the present invention is to provide a printing device which can save space in the case when it is used by being built into a photograph-processing apparatus and the like.